Selfie sticks? You’ve got to be kidding, right?

I was scrolling through The Net as I sometimes do when I came across the Selfie Stick. Yeah, that thing that you stick your camera/iPhone on then hold out like you’re fishing for an old-fashioned window hook so’s you can get make-believe your arm is over 2m long and your mugshot includes some of your surroundings.

Believe it or not (sorry Ripley), but that self-same Selfie Stick is apparently nominated as one of the Best Inventions of 2014. It wasn’t even invented in 2014.

Now, I get that everyone dislikes asking some stranger to take a photo for them. And chances are, if your camera is better than theirs or they are criminally minded, that stranger is likely to run off with all your fab instagram uploads.
I also get that you may require a photo in some impossibly remote location where strangers, criminally minded or not, are just not to be present; Surtsey Island for instance. Not that anyone should be advertising the fact that they have stepped onto a world protected site without permission…but I digress.

Selfie sticks nominated as one of the 25 best inventions of the past year…

Close ups of possible original selfie-stick users

How did we ever survive without this stick for all these centuries? Why did no-one think of them sooner? With this invention, we can finally claim to be a real civilisation! There will be no more close-up selfies with nose-hairs or chin pimples. Everyone will look gorgeous with the extra metre of so of focal length, and peace and harmony will reign. Because we can now have selfless selfies and include those around us! Wow, what a great original idea! In addition to our family, friends and celebs (far in the background), we could include all those starving people in Africa in our selfless selfies. We could include the great white sharks in our swimming selfies, and we could include all the smog around us in our environmental selfies! And at least one major world catastrophy will be avoided — we will all look gorgeous (within the bounds of photoshop) from now till the end of The Net and bits and bytes!

Go, selfie-stick go! Now I can finally take a selfie of myself surrounded by oil-slicked seabirds.

PS. Some selfless souls are banning the selfie-stick at selected venues – here comes the next heated debate.

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2 thoughts on “Selfie sticks? You’ve got to be kidding, right?”

I also read that the bluetooth ones are going to be banned/have been banned (I can’t remember) in S. Korea (I think, or somewhere like that) because they breach their wireless transmission regulations!
Might as well just glue your phone to the end of a pool cue 🙂